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Sustainable Development Goals: Are the Rich Countries Ready?

Policymakers in the OECD countries still generally look upon the SDGs as a development policy issue. The task for high-income countries, one might assume, is simply to provide greater levels of offi cial development assistance (ODA), specifically, pushing efforts closer to the target of 0.7 percent of GDP, which few countries have managed so far. The truth is, however, that the SDGs will not just require rich countries to increase development funds for others; they will need fundamental policy changes in their own countries. If the MDGs were the telescope through which rich countries viewed the developing world, the SDGs are the mirror in which they see their own policies and performance reflected. In other words, every country is now a developing country when it comes to an economic and social model which is both sustainable and socially just.